Warrior King or Politics

Warrior King: The Triumph and Betrayal of an American Commander in Iraq

Author: Nathan Sassaman

The startling and controversial memoir of combat and betrayal, written by one of the most prominent members of the U.S. fighting forces in Iraq

A West Point graduate, a former star quarterback who carried Army to its first bowl victory, and a courageous warrior who had proven himself on the battlefield time and again, Lt. Col. Nathan Sassaman was one of the most celebrated officers in the United States military. He commanded more than eight hundred soldiers in the heart of the insurgency-ravaged Sunni Triangle in Iraq, and his unit’s job was to seek out and eliminate terrorists and loyalists to Saddam Hussein, while simultaneously rebuilding the region’s infrastructure and introducing democratic processes to a broken people. Sassaman’s tactics were highly aggressive, his methods innovative, and his success in Iraq nearly unparalleled.

Yet Sassaman will always be known for a fateful decision to cover up the alleged drowning of an Iraqi by his men, in which they purportedly forced two detainees to jump into the Tigris River. The army initially charged three soldiers with manslaughter and a fourth with assault---the first time troops who served in Iraq have been charged with a killing in connection with the handling of detainees. Sassaman’s decision led to his downfall, despite an impressive career, and sent shock waves through the American military.

This controversial decision goes to the heart of the complex fight in Iraq, where key army leaders betray one another, politics in the war room leads to lost lives on the battlefield, and enemy factions routinely sabotage U.S. efforts, making success difficult for American commanders on thebattlefield.

Warrior King is the explosive memoir of one of the most deeply involved members of the U.S. military in Iraq. This is the first book to take readers from the overnight brutality of combat to the daunting daytime humanitarian tasks of rebuilding Iraq to the upper echelons of the Pentagon to show how and why the war has gone horribly wrong.

Kirkus Reviews

A battalion commander who challenged army leadership and was punished for it scathingly indicts America's miscalculations in Iraq. West Point graduate and career soldier Sassaman was deployed in 2003 as battalion commander of the Fourth Infantry Division's 1-8 Infantry in Iraq. From day one, he ran afoul of his superior officer, Colonel Fred Rudesheim, whose "filtered, innocuous, and risk-averse orders," the author believed, contributed to the preventable killing of his men. Although a stickler for order, Sassaman calls himself a type-A personality who encouraged in his command the judicious "crossing of boundaries" in cases of life and death. Boastful of the success demonstrated by his battalion, he admits he had become "something of a warrior king in Iraq," paving the way to career suicide by continually challenging the orders of his superior. Then, on the night of January 3, 2004, two of his men detained two Iraqi males in northern Samarra shortly after curfew and forced them to jump in the Tigris River. "A high school prank," declares the author, who was in command but not present at the time; he repeats the soldiers' assurances that they saw both men walking away from the river and points out that no body was found. Nonetheless, an investigation was conducted and Sassaman held accountable for the alleged drowning of one of the Iraqis. He got a "letter of reprimand under Article 15 proceeding," which meant that he could be promoted to colonel but no higher. He might have been able to live with that, but an April 5 article in the Washington Post, with extensive quotes from Rudesheim, brought the incident to public attention, and Sassaman retired the following summer. "I thought wecould win the war," he writes. "But there is no war right now. It's law enforcement, and we're losing ten, fifteen soldiers a week to law enforcement."A valuable insider's look at the many-layered ramifications of the American-Iraqi tragedy of errors.

Interesting book: The Autobiography of Malcolm X or Supervision of Police Personnel

Politics (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)

Author: Aristotl

Aristotle's Politics is one of the earliest, and at the same time one of the most thorough and balanced, accounts of politics. It provides extended analyses of the origin and function of the state; the proper distribution of political power among the branches of government; a classification of the different types of regime; the reasons why the different regimes fail and how to prevent such failure; and, in general, the principal details of practical politics. In this respect, it is a primer on government as valuable today as it was when first written.

The greatest contribution of the Politics, however, lies in its establishment of the fundamental principles underlying these details-the political significance of human nature and rationality; the relation of the human good to the political good; the critical difference between politics and economics; and the true justification for political authority and power. At the very least, Aristotle's Politics is a reminder that government, both in theory and practice, needs to have its foundation and justification in broader understandings of man, of nature, and of the purpose of political life.